


When Thunder Strikes

by Chikita



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Babysitting, Brother-Sister Dynamic, Fear of Thunderstorms, Hinata needs a nap, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22515802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chikita/pseuds/Chikita
Summary: Babysitting your little sister overnight shouldn't be that hard. But with a scary thunderstorm raging outside, that proves to be a bit of a challenge for an already tired out Shouyou. Add frozen pocky, weird tv programs and unplanned phone calls to your crush, and you get a recipe for disaster.
Relationships: Hinata Natsu & Hinata Shouyou, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 8
Kudos: 198





	When Thunder Strikes

**Author's Note:**

> I can't seem to write cute Hinata & Natsu content without throwing Kagehina into it, lol. I made Natsu a bit younger in this fic (about 4-5 at most), but as far as I know she doesn't have a canon age. I just needed her to be an actual kid for this, not a preteen.
> 
> No idea how this happened again, but I like making Hinata suffer sometimes. Tw for some very minor horror themes.

A crack of thunder rippled through the air, piercing the silence of the room. Shouyou’s eyes snapped open to darkness, safe for the tiniest ray of light making its way through the blinds. Still groggy from sleep, he sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes, noticing how his legs were all tangled up in the blanket. Before he could check the time, there was a deep rumble from outside, followed by another crack, and the whole room lit up like it was on fire.

It only lasted for a brief moment, but that was enough for Shouyou to let out a yelp, so high-pitched that he should’ve been embarrassed, really. But fortunately, he was alone that night. No reason to be embarrassed when there was no one to see him freaking out over a little thunder. Kageyama would definitely make fun of him for it, so much was clear.

With a dull _thump,_ Shouyou’s head hit his pillow, and he rolled over onto his side, curling up in fetal position. He clenched his eyes shut, desperate to get back to sleep so he would be well-rested for the upcoming practice match against Dateko. He tried, but now rain was pattering onto the window so loudly, Shouyou feared the water would seep through the cracks, flood his room and drown him while he was sleeping. What a horrible way to die.

Or what if the water flooded the gym and forced them to cancel the match tomorrow? _Oh no._

Shouyou was so caught up in his thoughts about flooded gyms, canceled volleyball matches, and pissed-off Kageyamas, that he barely registered the obtrusive knocking on his door. With a creak said door slid open and something stepped into the room, a small shadowy figure with messy hair and long sleeves like some kind of ghostly creature. It almost looked like-

“Sho-chan?” Shouyou breathed out a sigh, his shoulders sagging in relief. Of course. Even though his mother was gone for the night for some work-related reason, he wasn’t the only person in the house. And even though his little sister wasn’t nearly as much as a scaredy-cat than he was, she surely wasn’t here to make fun of him either. She was _way_ too nice for that.

“Hey, Natsu. Can’t sleep either, huh?”, he asked, trying but failing to mask the quiver in his voice. The shadowy figure nodded, or shrugged, he couldn’t really tell in the darkness.

“Wanna stay in my room?” Again, nothing but a nod, and a little sniffle. Okay, maybe she was just as tired as he was. Without saying a word, Natsu shuffled out of the room before coming back a few moments later, carrying a rolled-up futon under one arm, and the rest of her bedding under the other. Shouyou helped her set up the futon next to his own bed, all the while trying to remember the last time they had been sleeping in the same room together.

“You don’t have to be afraid of thunderstorms. They’re harmless,” Shouyou said as he draped the blanket over Natsu’s smaller body before crawling back into his own bed. The wind was howling outside, the pattering noise of the rain only growing in volume. He gulped, a shiver running down his spine as he fisted his hands into the blanket underneath. He needed to sleep. Natsu was silent, _eerily_ silent. Not only that but from what he could see in the dark, she wasn’t moving. Wait, was she even _breathing?_

Shouyou sat up, and reached out to her, when another flash dipped the room in white blazing light, followed by an absurdly loud crashing noise, that sounded like the apocalypse was nearing. Shouyou didn’t even have time to organize his thoughts, when suddenly, something flung itself onto him with full speed, colliding with his chest and gripping onto his pajama shirt. Startled by the sudden attack, Shouyou’s breath got caught in his throat, and he reflexively wrapped his arms around the small body clinging to his torso. He stayed like this for a few seconds, unsure of what to do, before a small whimper joined the rumble and pattering outside.

“Natsu, shh! It’s alright. We’re safe,” Shouyou whispered, even though his own heart was beating so hard his chest hurt. Soon, the whimper turned into a whine, then a sob, until Natsu was full-on wailing in his arms, burying her face in his chest and scrambling all over his lap.

“Make it stop! Shou-chan! It’s so loud! It want my mom!”, she cried, breath hitching, and Shouyou couldn’t do anything but continue to rub her back in soothing circles, while the gods up in the heavens where raging without regard for the mortals below. _Stupid weather._ With a huff, Shouyou picked up Natsu along with the blanket they were both wrapped in and staggered to the back of his room. With the crying child still in his arms and clinging to his shirt, he ripped open the window, ignoring the harsh wind hitting his face as he took a deep breath.

“SHUT. UP!”, he yelled out into the air, but it didn’t do anything to stop the thunderstorm, only made Natsu cry even harder. Sighing in defeat, he marked that attempt as a failure and shut the window. Well, at least _he_ felt more at ease now, but that only barely improved the situation.

After pondering about what usually worked when it came to cheering Natsu up, Shouyou rushed to the kitchen, switching on all the lights he passed on the way. When he opened the fridge, a box of pocky caught his view, and his eyes lightened up. Yes. Natsu _loved_ pocky.

“Natsu, do you want some of that?”, Shouyou asked in a cheerful voice and pointed at the pocky, looking down at the child on his hips, whose eyes were red and puffy from crying.

“No-hoo, mom says i-if I eat sweets after bedtime my-my t-teeth will rot and fall out. And then I’ll die,” she blubbered, wiping her nose on Shouyou’s shirt to smear snot all over it. At this point, Shouyou was convinced she was doing it on purpose. Pretty sure their mom had _also_ never said anything about dying from eating too many sweets, and if she did, that was just cruel.

Out of pure stubbornness, Shouyou tried to grab one of the pocky sticks, but they were frozen with everything stuck together in a massive block of biscuit and chocolate cream. That was unfortunate. Without further hesitation, he picked up the whole thing, took a bite, and started chewing, only stopping himself when Natsu whined in protest. _Right,_ he was supposed to make his baby sister feel better, not get on a sugar rush at midnight. Damnit. After leaving the pocky where it was and shutting the fridge door with a slam, Shouyou went over to the living room.

“You’re getting too heavy to be carried around like a baby,” he said with a huff, and dropped Natsu onto the couch, looking her up and down with worry. Her face was stained with tears, her nose snotty, and she was shivering. But hey, at least she wasn’t having a full-blown panic attack anymore. Right? Another crash outside, another strike of lightning, and within no time Natsu was back to clinging to him like a koala. Shouyou stared at one of the walls in the room, his eyes already losing their focus while Natsu was busy crying her eyes out _again._

Okay, this was going to be a long, long night.

Maybe some sounds to drown out the noise outside would help, Shouyou decided after a bit of thinking and picked up the remote to switch on the tv. He ended up regretting his idea when the first channel he landed on depicted a scene out of an old slasher movie, where a laughing guy with a chainsaw was in the process of slicing off the head of a screaming woman.

“That lady is dead now,” a small, sniffly voice reached his ears, a finger pointing at the screen. With a shaky hand, Shouyou switched to another channel before either he or his sister could get even more traumatized, and he wouldn’t get sick after stuffing his face with chocolate. The next one was a sports channel, one that would occasionally broadcast matches of the volleyball national teams and pro leagues. It was one of the few tv programs he could even talk to Kageyama about. Sadly, the channel had morphed into something entirely different during the night, and while it wasn’t traumatizing, Natsu was a bit too young to watch “hot tennis chicks in your region playing with your balls tonight”, or any variation of it with different sports.

Shouyou stopped on a music channel, and even though the music itself wasn’t exactly his taste, it served as a distraction to the rumble of thunder outside. So here he was, sitting on a couch in the middle of the night in an uncomfortable position with his sister hanging off his neck watching old people sing traditional Japanese folk songs on tv. Whenever the weather outside acted up again, Natsu let out a frightened squeak and pressed her face against the already wet stain on Shouyou's shirt, but other than that she had calmed down. _Somewhat._

“Let’s get you back in bed, okay?”, Shouyou said after they had been sitting there for about half an hour. His neck was getting stiff, his eyes stung, and he also really needed to pee. The latter wouldn't have been as much of an issue if it weren't for Natsu sitting on his lap in a position that caused her knee to dig into his lower stomach everytime she moved.

“No.” Natsu shook her head and tightened her grip on his shirt, “It's scary. I wanna stay here with you forever.”

“You know we can sleep in my room together. We can even leave all the lights on, I don't mind.”

“No.”

Shouyou groaned at his sister's stubbornness, shifted his and Natsu's weight on the couch, and reached out for his phone lying on the table in front of him. He flipped it open, the start screen revealing itself as a team selfie with him and Kageyama in the center. It was a new phone his mother had gotten him for his birthday because his old flip phone had died after he’d flung it down an entire set of stairs in school. All those customizable options were pretty awesome. Seeing his volleyball team, the main focus of his life, whenever he looked at his phone screen, always managed to put a smile on his face. At least that’s what he kept telling himself.

“What are you doing?”, Natsu asked and craned her neck to watch Shouyou scroll through his contact list. Shouyou let her, it wasn't like she could read more than a few characters at her age.

“Texting Kageyama,” he lied, as all he did was read the last few messages they'd sent each other. It was standard stuff. Times and locations where to meet for volleyball practice, random photos of even more random things like food or animals, and, of course, an ever-growing list to keep track of their racing score. To think that not even a year ago, he'd been viewing Kageyama as a nuisance and his worst enemy as far as volleyball was concerned, and now he was sending him memes. What a strange twist of fate.

“Tobio-kun?”, Natsu gasped, and Shouyou could've sword her eyes started sparkling with more than just tears, “Can we call him? Please, Shou-chan, I want to talk to him, too. Please!”

“We can't call him. Do you know what time it is? He needs his sleep to be fit for the match tomorrow. Seriously.” _And so do I._ For some reason, Natsu’s demands irritated him more than usual. What was so cool about that Kageyama guy, that girls of all ages flocked to him like moths to a flame? He wasn’t cool. In fact, he was rather lame outside of volleyball, with no sense of humor, bad social skills, and a potty mouth. His hair looked stupid too. It was all black and _flat,_ and shiny, and his eyes were just _way_ too blue, and-

Shouyou shook his head like a wet dog to get the image out of his mind, but when he looked down to the object that had triggered his thought process, the only thing he saw was his hand. His _empty_ hand, where his phone should’ve been. With a pang of horror, his eyes turned to his side where Natsu was idly sitting on the couch and playing with his phone, her bare feet dangling off the edge.

“Natsuuu, give it back!” Now it was Shouyou’s turn to whine like a small child, and when he stretched out his arm to get a hold of the stolen object, Natsu shuffled a few inches to the left. Shouyou succeeded at grabbing his phone, but lost his balance. A yelp and a crash later, his body made contact with the floor, a dull pain shooting through his right shoulder.

Grumbling, he pressed the small object against his chest and looked up at Natsu with a scowl. He intended to scold her for taking his things without asking, but lying on the ground surrounded by misplaced couch pillows, he probably didn’t look all that authoritative.

“Too late. I already clicked the button,” Natsu said all innocently. Shouyou scrunched up his nose at her words. She didn’t even _pretend_ to be sorry. So much for having a nice sister.

“What button?” He could've spared that question because not even a second later, a loud, angry-sounding voice was blaring out of the speakers. If Shouyou hadn’t just fallen off the couch, he would’ve done it by now.

“Hinata, what the hell? Why are you calling me at 3 am in the morning, dumbass?”

“Now we know what time it is,” Natsu said in a voice, that sounded too cheerful for someone who had been terrified out of her mind a few minutes ago. Speaking of it, aside from the rain still pouring onto their roof and hitting the glass of the windows, there was nothing left of the storm. No thunder, no lightning, nothing. The terror was gone. Or maybe it wasn't and they just couldn’t hear it because the tv presenter had just announced Takeo Ischi’s chicken yodeling song. The sound of _that_ was enough to drown out thunder, fireworks and bomb attacks alike.

“It wasn’t me who called. It was Natsu, my little sister,” Shouyou explained, well aware that Kageyama wasn’t good with names, “She stole my phone when I was daydreaming about y-, _volleyball._ I just had an idea for a new trick I could pull off at the match tomorrow...er, today? Today. Yeah. That’s it.” If it was 3 am, and he had to get up at seven, he only had about four hours of sleep left, and only if he went to bed and fell asleep right away. He had to keep this brief.

With the last of his strength, Shouyou hoisted himself up on his elbows and climbed back onto the couch where Natsu was staring at him with unmasked curiosity. He barely used his phone for _calling_ people, safe for maybe his mom, and now he was calling _Kageyama_ of all people. At night.

“Fine, just...don’t do anything weird. And go to bed already! I won’t toss to you if you show up at the match all sleep-deprived. You’re going to hurt yourself, dumbass.” Was he just imagining things, or did Kageyama sound...worried? _Weird._ Maybe, he really was suffering from sleep-deprivation. Oh, but who was he kidding, _of course,_ he was. Practice had been grueling that afternoon and compared to Natsu, Shouyou’s seemingly boundless energy and stamina only lasted as long as he was on a high during volleyball. He almost always crashed right after. But this evening, he’d been too busy keeping his baby sister from taking the house apart.

“By the way, where’s that strange music coming from? Is that Swedish?”

“I dunno. German, I think.” Shouyou grabbed the remote and switched off the tv, ignoring Natsu’s complaints about this being “her third favorite song” on this channel. That proved to be a horrible mistake, he realized soon enough, because now that Natsu wasn’t distracted by the tv anymore, she switched her attention to Shouyou and his unplanned phone call.

“Hellooo!”, she all but yelled into the phone that was left on speaker and went back to climbing on Shouyou’s lap to get even closer to the object of her desire. Shouyou’s ears were ringing, either from Kageyama’s yelling, Natsu’s, or the yodeling that had turned into a nasty earworm. He wished his mom would come home to put an end to all of this, but he’d promised to be on babysitting duty for the whole night, so she wouldn’t be back until sunrise.

“Um...hello? Natsu?”, Kageyama answered, his firm, angry voice replaced by one dripping with barely masked insecurity. If the situation had been any different and Shouyou hadn’t been so _exhausted,_ he would’ve laughed. Kageyama was so awkward with kids, it was almost adorable. A monster on the court, skilled and versatile, but so _so_ bad with people.

Shouyou would never forget that one afternoon he’d brought Natsu to volleyball practice. While everyone had been charmed by her cheerful attitude, Kageyama had tried his hardest to avoid sharing a space with her, as if she had a nasty disease. Some of their teammates had been weirded out, with Tanaka jokingly calling him a cold-hearted bastard for ignoring a _child_. Later that day, Kageyama had confessed to Shouyou, that he’d been afraid of making Natsu cry by so much as _looking_ at her the wrong way. Shouyou had been strangely touched by how much he cared. After all, children cried all the time, and not always for good reasons. But Natsu was one of those kids who couldn’t be avoided. The more distanced someone acted towards her, the more persistent she was to try and befriend that person.

Even now she was chatting up Kageyama on the phone, talking about anything and everything, about what she had for breakfast, what color of socks she had picked this morning (purple! with unicorns!), and tons of other pointless stuff, but Kageyama still replied with “yes” and “oh, really?” every few seconds. As Shouyou listened to the rather one-sided conversation, he couldn’t help but feel proud of being one of the few people Kageyama talked to normally, without a filter of endearing, but ultimately fake politeness that left him visibly at edge all the time.

“Natsu, I’ve told you, Kageyama needs to sleep. You can tell him all of those things later.” He stifled a yawn, rubbing at his eyes until they felt even sorer than before.

“Oh, but I’m almost finished,” Natsu said, bouncing on Shouyou’s lap before turning back to the phone, “And then I went to bed, but you won’t believe, when I woke up there was a big storm, and it was loud and scary and I cried a little, but only _a little,_ because Shou-chan was there to protect me, and-” She gasped for breath, “A-And, did you know he has a picture of you on his phone? He always looks at it, probably ‘cause he likes you so much.”

_Wait._

Shouyou snapped out of his half-asleep daze at her words, face flushing with heat. Before this could get even more embarrassing, he snatched his phone back in a swift motion, turned off the speaker, and held it up to his ear, cutting his sister out of the conversation.

“Don’t listen to her, Kageyama! It’s a team selfie and you just happen to be in the middle. This means nothing.” His voice came out all breathy and rushed, “There’s nothing weird about having pictures of your team as your phone background. And I _don’t_ look at it all the time.”

As always, Kageyama replied without hesitating. “Dumbass. You're making a fuss over nothing. I have pictures of you on my phone too, not just the whole team. Isn’t that something friends do? You’re the one being weird about this.” Shouyou made a protesting sound, that was silly enough for Natsu to stare at him. Kageyama had photos of him on his phone that he looked at? Just _him_ without any of their teammates? And not only that, but he was _admitting it?_

“Hey! How would you know what’s weird and what isn’t? You didn’t have any friends until high school. If one of us is gonna be a weirdo, it’s you, not me.” The words escaped his mouth before his brain caught up. Damnit. _Damnit._ He bit his lip. He hadn’t intended to insult Kageyama, let alone bring up something, he _knew_ his friend was sensitive about since that one incident at Kitagawa Daiichi. His insides twisted into a knot. This whole conversation was slowly but surely turning into a full-blown disaster. Even Natsu looked offended, but she was probably just sulking because she wasn't allowed to tinker with his phone anymore.

“Sorry. Really, I just-”, Hinata sighed in exasperation, before another yawn made its way up his throat, bringing tears to his eyes. He slumped against the back of the couch, turned his head away from Natsu who had slipped off his lap, and pressed his face into one of the cushions. His cheeks were burning hot, and he kind of wanted to scream for no real reason.

“What's wrong with you? Are you sick? You’re not making any sense.”

“Look, I know that. I know I’m talking nonsense, but I’m really, _really_ tired. My mom’s away and I’m babysitting Natsu tonight, and she’s been a handful, and I-” He bit his lip again, nose scrunching up in frustration as he held his phone away to squint at the screen. Why was he even telling Kageyama all of this? He was just going to get even more mad at him, and-

“You should come to my house after the match.”

Shouyou stopped his train of thoughts, and blinked at the lights on the wall, confusion setting in. “What? Why?” Was Kageyama so offended, that he wanted to murder him and bury him in his parents’ yard? Wasn’t that a bit too much for a slip-up? He had apologized. What else did he want?

“I don’t know anything about babysitting, but you’re obviously overworked. You need a break,” Kageyama continued, his voice sounding neutral, but at the same time, strangely soft. _Okay._ That was unexpected. More than unexpected. How was he going to reply? When Shouyou peered over his shoulder at Natsu, she only gave him a questioning look. She was sitting at his side with her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyelids droopy and head bobbing forward every few seconds. _Great._ So now even _she_ was getting exhausted by her antics.

“Lemme get this straight,” Shouyou said into the phone as he turned back around with his full body, brows furrowing in disbelief, “You’re inviting me to your house because you want me to take a nap?”

There was silence on the other end of the line before Kageyama picked back up.

“Call it however you want, but you haven't been yourself in practice today either. All that stress is going to hurt your performance and make you _actually_ sick. I also-” Silence again. Shouyou waited. There were a million things he could say to start an argument and ruin the mood, but for once, he managed to keep his composure. “I wouldn’t mind just...having you around. Like, only the two of us. My...my parents won’t be at home tomorrow so...Yeah.”

He sounded strained as if he had to force out every word. but not even once did Shouyou doubt his sincerity. Even though his fatigue, his chest filled with warmth, the corners of his mouth turning up on their own. So, Kageyama was okay with him just visiting? Not that it would’ve been the first time he did, but he’d always figured that unless volleyball or school work was involved, he wasn’t all that interesting to Kageyama, at least not in the way he secretly _wanted_ to be.

Maybe he had been wrong all that time. Maybe he had a chance, however small it may be.

“Um...sounds good? I mean, we don’t have to _actually_ nap, if that’s too boring to you. We could watch a movie. Or we could nap, I’m okay with either, really. Or both. We could watch a movie and _then_ take a nap.” Shouyou resisted the impulse to bash his head against the nearest wall. Kageyama was more or less inviting him to a date, a _nap date,_ and here he was, rambling like some kind of idiot. And yet, he couldn’t keep himself from smiling. This was really happening.

“Sure.”

Shouyou’s heart leaped up his throat, and if this had been a cartoon, flowers would've been dancing around his head, butterflies in his stomach. “Okay. See you at the match tomorrow.”

“Today, dumbass!”

“Right. Today. Bye then!” Shouyou clicked the red button before either he or Kageyama could come up with any more stupid things to say, missing a few times because his sight was getting blurry. He looked over at Natsu, the only other witness in the room.

Less than a minute had passed, and here she was, out like a light, curled up, with her head on the armrest of the couch. Though she wasn’t snoring, the cushions beneath her were stained with a wet spot, where she had been drooling onto the fabric. It looked super gross, but Shouyou couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed. At last, he’d managed to get her to fall asleep. That meant he hadn’t completely failed as a babysitter. His mom would be proud.

“I should probably thank you,” Shouyou said more to himself than to Natsu, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of the situation. He stood up on unsteady legs, picked up the blanket from where it had fallen onto the floor, and tucked Natsu in for the second, _no,_ first time that day. After all, it was already morning. It wasn’t long until sunrise, and then he would have to get up for school. But for now, he would just try to get as much sleep as possible.

Praying, that the horror thunderstorm from before wouldn’t make a return, Shouyou switched off the lights, _finally_ went to the bathroom, and walked the whole way back to his room like a zombie. His alarm clock said 4 am. Three more hours of sleep, four and a half if he counted math class. He would get up in the morning, eat a quick breakfast, suffer through school, and demolish the Iron Wall of Dateko at the practice match, with his and Kageyama’s freak quick. And then, after all that was dealt with, he would go to Kageyama's house where he would take the best nap of the century. After tonight's troubles, he really needed it.

**Author's Note:**

> I need more Natsu content. Also if I dated people I would have napdates.


End file.
